The present invention relates to shower benches attached to and vertically supported by vertical walls in a shower, but that is not supported by a floor of the shower.
There are shower installations that require benches. A common method for construction of a shelf style bench is to construct a frame of wood supported on a floor of the shower, attach plywood or a cementitous backer board to form a structural bench, and then attach a ceramic tile or natural stone bonded to the top and front surfaces for aesthetics and water resistance. However, units constructed using wood framing are subject to expansion, contraction, and warp due to the extreme variation in temperature and humidity found in a shower environment. The wood framing also provides a food source that supports mold growth. In addition, warping causes grout and tile failures that contribute to deflection.
One known shower bench (called Better Bench®) uses a formed sheet metal pan attached to a shower wall corner. The pan is filled with 50-80 lbs. of mortar depending on its size and configuration. The arrangement is manually intensive to install, and further is difficult to correctly install, such that most people cannot do the installation but instead must hire a skilled worker. The bench develops its strength as the mortar cures. Due to the wet shower environment, salts can leach from the mortar and cause staining of the walls and floor. However, this inherently requires significant cure time for the mortar prior to setting the tile or natural stone. Thus, it is expensive, both due to the requirement of using skilled labor, and due to the fact that the skilled person needs to allow the mortar to cure and return to the job to set the tile and grout the bench.